Consistent meditation draws energy from the instinctive mind into superconscious, lessening antagonistic forces. Energy is energy although it flows through different channels. We can control the flow of energy within us. Identify patterns you want to change. Refined regular spiritual religious activity expresses energy through higher chakras. Identify with inner perfection our soul nature.

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning everyone.

This is from yesterday's lesson on energy from Merging With Siva. I'll read part of the lesson then comment on it and read again.

"Meditation can be sustained only if one lives a wholesome life, free from emotional entanglements and adharmic deeds. Intensive, consistent meditation dispels the antagonistic, selfish, instinctive forces of the mind and converts those channels of energy into uplifted, creative action."

Gurudeva's pointing out that consistent meditation impacts our state of mind, And in this example he's talking about energy, how energy is flowing in us. The energy energizing the intellectual mind, instinctive mind, the superconscious mind. What is it doing within us?

Part of the way we can control that is consistent meditation. We meditate consistently then that practice is drawing energy out of the instinctive mind and putting energy in to the intellectual and superconscious minds. As he says: It lessens the antagonistic forces. You could all use that, right? Little less antagonism, tendencies to get upset by others and say things we shouldn't, etcetera. Lash out. An antagonist force is lessened by just by the practice of consistent meditation.

The context for consistent meditation, in Gurudeva's teachings, is a daily vigil. Setting aside a certain time every day, except weekends or when we're traveling. Every day where we perform our religious spiritual practices. One of them being meditation. Gurudeva points out in some of his writings that the same time every day is important. Sometimes that's not possible but it is when our life is that well structured to meditate. To have a daily vigil at the same time is much more beneficial then moving the time around.

Gurudeva continues:

"The same force works to make either the saint or the sinner. The same force animates both love and hate. It is for the devotee to control and direct that one force so that it works through the highest channels of creative expression."

Again, we're looking at the energy and at this point he's focusing on how the energy is energy. Energy is pure energy; it flows through love or it flows through hate. It's the same energy; it's not something different. The example I thought of is gasoline. Gasoline can power lots of different vehicles, some of them helpful, some of them harmful. You take gasoline on Kauai, quite often its a fuel for a tourist bus. Rather harmless activity. Person going around the island enjoying themselves. Gasoline: You can use gasoline to power a tank and that tank can attack a neighboring country in an unprovoked way which we view as not good.

It's the same gasoline. The gasoline in of itself is neutral. Just like the energy in us, in and of itself is neutral. It flows through different channels.

Many of us have been to India and seen the system for water usage at a temple. You have a long pipe and you have spigots along the pipe so that many people can use it at the same time for the same purpose: To wash their hands and feet before going in the temple. That's a nice analogy to energy and the chakras. We can imagine a pipe that has fourteen spigots on it. The ones on the right side are the higher chakras; the ones on the left side are the lower chakras. Water is water; it can come out of any of the spigots. It's still water.

Energy can come out through any of our chakras; it's still energy. What controls energy? Well, Gurudeva mentioned consistent meditation. Similar activities control energy when we engage in devotional activities such as the home shrines, doing puja, attending puja, coming to the temple on a regular basis. Being involved in and performing refined music. Of course, Gurudeva prefers Hindu music. But any kind of refined music is causing the energies to get expressed through some of these higher chakras.

So, our activities that we do on a regular basis determine how our energy flows or which spigots it comes out. So, if we're engaged in those kinds of activities, occasionally, we might get up to Divine Love. It's the fifth one on the right. And hopefully, regularly, we get into cognition. We're able to look down on our mind and understand what we like about ourselves and what we don't and change what we don't. And we get into willpower and so forth. Those are the qualities we would tend to manifest if we were doing regular spiritual religious activities.

If we're not, we're just living an ordinary life. Of course, it depends on our specific nature but we would tend not to get quite as high. We would come down more into sub-willpower, reason, memory and maybe fear and occasionally, instead of divine love, we're getting down anger. As we know, the second one on the left is anger.

What spigot the water comes out of totally depends on our regular activities. Just energy is flowing through us. When we look at it in such a detached way the concept of: I'm a good person, I'm a bad person, I have these qualities, I have that, starts to go away. We just see it impersonally that we can control the flow of energy within us and the kinds of activities we choose to do on a regular basis.

Continuing with Gurudeva:

"When this soul force is awakened, the refined qualities of love, forgiveness, loyalty and generosity begin to unfold. In this ascended state of concentrated consciousness, the devotee will be able to look down on all the tense conditions and involvements within his own mind from a view far 'above' them. As the activity of his thoughts subsides, he begins to feel at home in that pure state of Being, released from his identification with and bondage to lower states of mind. A profound feeling of complete freedom persists."

Looking down on the patterns of our mind -- I mentioned that in passing and you'll remember my story, but it's the one that I think is worth hearing again. The Mount Tamalpais story that in Gurudeva's early years he would take his devotees up to the top of Mount Tamalpais where you could look down on the surrounding cities. It was a physical mountain top consciousness riding up there and looking down. And it was amazing what it did. It helped you look down upon your own mind. In looking down upon cars and houses and patterns you see down there you're able to look down on your own mind more effectively. See the patterns you like, see the patterns you don't like. Make up your mind to change at least one of the ones you don't like. You have that ability to do that. Of course, you don't have to drive up to the top of a mountain to do it; it's just a simple way of grasping the idea. But, once you have the idea you can just practice meditation. And if the mind is quiet enough and you're detached enough from what you see then you can identify patterns that you want to change.

One of the themes I'm taking to the Caribbean when we go there in August is based upon last years trip. We found out that there was a certain amount of Christian Evangelical influence there a number of years ago. I guess really the evangelical community in the U.S. was vying for who could convert the most Hindu souls in Trinidad, for example. Seems to have slackened off for one reason or another; I'm not sure why.

But that idea that comes from the Evangelical Christianity that: I'm a sinner. You could sense it there more strongly than you find it among Hindus in the U.S., for example. I'm flawed; I'm imperfect, I'm a sinner. I need external help to redeem myself. So, my talk starts out: Man's nature. Are we essentially a divinity or essentially a sinner? It goes through a number of quotes about why we're divinity. One that I noted the most is Swami Vivekananda because he says: "The only sin is to think yourself a sinner."

He really didn't like that concept of sin.

Here he is at the Parliament of World Religions, 1893 I think it is in Chicago, you know. I can imagine the group he's speaking to when he fired out with that one. "The only sin is to think yourself a sinner."

But the point is we need to feel good about ourselves. In order to identify negative patterns and change them we can't have a negative concept of our self. Because then we kind of hide the patterns from our self. We're not willing to admit that they're there.

I was thinking about how to describe that and we have our inner perfection and out outer imperfection shall we say. So we can identify more with our inner perfection -- our soul nature -- and realize the outer has it's problems so we can improve it. And we're more detached and more impersonal. It's more water flowing through a spigot then who we are. You know, we can control which spigot shall I turn on today. How do I want my energy to flow. Which negative pattern that I find myself in, do I want to improv today? It becomes easier because we look at it in an impersonal way; we're not challenged because we know the inside of us is always perfect.

[End of transcript.]